Well, the last four columns are advanced.  The stats come courtesy of college splits. All I did was add the ISO, BB% and K%. College Splits is what would happen if Rivals College Baseball or Baseball America had a lovechild with FanGraphs. If you care about the draft or college baseball at all, and haven’t bookmarked College Splits already, well, shame on you. These numbers are adjusted for park and strength of schedule.

Per the guys at Splits, a walk rate below 12% and a strikeout rate over 18% are red flags.

You might have heard about Zack Cox and his lack of big-time power. He did change his swing this season into something more of a line drive, contact-oriented swing this year, and it clearly helped his batting average. But a .179 ISO is rather light for a college hitter. Still, if he can hit around .300 every year while being near adequate defensively, he’ll be just fine if all he hits is 12-18 homers per season.

It may seem strange to you that Cox’s numbers aren’t worlds better than some of the later round picks. The answer is simple, scouts are looking at future projection, the player’s tools, not their stat lines. All I’m sharing here is what the player has done, this year.

Cody Stanley is a sabermetric darling of sorts. He caught the attention of Jeff Sackmann, who using a system that weights offense, defense and baserunning, ranked Stanley as the second best college catcher after Yasmani Grandal. He’s good at a bit of everything; best of all he should stick at catcher.

If Nick Longmire has a Chris Young starter kit, he needs to tap into it. An adjusted .470 slugging percentage at the college level is less than impressive. Again, tools before stats, but it was not a real impressive season for Longmire on paper.

Pat “The Bat” Biserta was someone who caught my eye while screwing around the College Splits leaderboard earlier in the year. Rutgers plays in a hitter’s graveyard and plays a tough schedule, and as you can see, the dude put up some crazy numbers. Not a very good walk rate, but behold the ISO! It was a breakout season, and it coincided from a move from DH to left field. It also didn’t hurt that he cut down his strikeouts and started hitting more balls in the air. Biserta was also subject of discussion over at College Splits’ blog, head over there for more details on the Pat Biserta story, or question, whichever way you want to put it.  I think the question about his draftability has been answered; it’s pretty clear major league teams aren’t overly sold given how low he was drafted. I bet he mashes in A-Ball, though.

Chad Oberecker has my attention now. It looks as if he has some speed to stay in center and he did the right things with his bat this season.

Hawaii’s ballpark must be a real pitcher’s park, because his raw numbers don’t look anywhere near as good as his adjusted numbers. Luhnow says his glove is “plus-plus”. Could be an interesting sleeper, although the walk rate isn’t great.

Taylor Black’s OBP, BB% discrepancy comes from 20 HBP’s. In other words, he’s playing loose with the rules, and may have a future in acting.

Anyway, again this is just what the players have done. These numbers might help identify some undersold prospects, and I know I’ll be watching the career of Pat Biserta now with great interest.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 8th, 2010 at 11:04 pm and is filed under 2010 MLB Draft. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.